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If there’s one thing every self-published author yearns for, it’s to be reviewed alongside traditionally published books, but for most that’s a dream that is unlikely to come true. Book reviewers, whether for traditional book review columns or book blogs, frequently don’t accept submissions from self-published authors. Instead, there’s a web of professional relationships between traditional publishers and reviewers which keeps the books and the reviews flowing.

analyzes a dozen “great millennial dramas” that have forged a new golden age in TV: bold, innovative shows that have pushed the boundaries of storytelling, mixed high and low culture, and demonstrated that the small screen could be an ideal medium for writers and directors eager to create complex, challenging narratives with “moral shades of gray.”

Sepinwall got the kind of coverage that most traditionally published authors can only dream of. To some extent, this might just be reviewers reviewing another reviewer, a little bit of moral support from your friends, except Sepinwall’s friends have very big megaphones. But at the same time, it illustrates that the idea of a division between ‘traditionally published’ and ‘self-published’ is becoming a ridiculous construct with no meaning whatsoever.

In fact, the variation in quality within the groups of ‘traditionally published books’ and ‘self-published books’ is likely now greater than the variation between those two groups. If you could objectively plot quality against frequency, I’d put money on both groups showing a normal distribution with the graphs mostly overlapping.

Drawing distinctions purely on the way that a book has been published now says more about the person making the comparison than the books they are comparing. The best of self-publishing can compete on equal terms with the best of traditional publishing, as Sepinwell so ably demonstrates.

The reasons that self-published books don’t get reviewed boil down, I think, to the lack of infrastructure. A traditional publishing company can get to know different reviewers and send them the books that they think will go down best with that person. And the reviewer works on the assumption that what he or she is sent by the publisher has to be at least half-decent and thus worth opening. This whole process works because it’s mediated and because of the assumption that a third party stamp of approval for a book guarantees minimum levels of quality.

Most reviewers don’t want to deal with self-published authors directly because they don’t really want to deal with any authors directly, that’s not how the process normally works. To be honest, they shouldn’t deal with authors directly, for therein lies far too much opportunity for unnecessary conflict.

Equally, self-published authors are usually not represented by a third party who can best marry up book with reviewer, and, as more importantly, make decisions about which books should go out to the reviewers and which should not. It’s important here to remember that not every traditionally published authors will have their book sent out to reviewers, it depends on how much marketing budget has been allocated. And even if their book is sent out, that doesn't mean that they're going to get a review: There are far more books than there are reviewers.

But still, reviewers depend on publishers acting as winnowers, sorting out the wheat from the chaff, and at least attempting to make sure that they are sent books they are actually interested in. It’s this weeding out process that’s missing in self-publishing. Star ratings on Amazon or Goodreads are not a dependable substitute — we’ve seen only too often how easily reviews are faked or manipulated — what is needed is something much more robust.

I think there’s a great business opportunity here for the person who can figure out how to make it work. At the moment, many publicity options for self-published authors rely on desperate people paying ridiculous sums of money for vaguely defined and often worthless services. That’s not good for authors, and it doesn’t help reviewers either. What’s needed is something more robust, something which doesn’t try to put lipstick on any literary pigs, but which instead builds its business on picking out the brass from the muck and passing that on to the folks with the megaphones.